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Richard A. Henault, FACHE, assumes office as the Chairman of the American College of Healthcare Executives on February 28, 2004, at the annual Council of Regents Meeting during the 47th Congress on Healthcare Management.
Q. When you began your career in healthcare management, what was your goal?
A. After my undergraduate education as I was trying to determine what my professional goals might be, I found myself interviewing for a job as a lab tech in a local community hospital (a job for which I was eminently unqualified). I became fascinated with the hospital, which struck me as "a city within a city"-an organization thriving 24 hours per day, seven days a week. I was amazed by the vibrant, pulsating mosaic of the enterprise, which was populated by so many professionally diverse and talented people. As I became aware of the management structure and the fact that people were actually in charge of operating the organization, I made an appointment with the president and CEO, who graciously agreed to share his time with me. he introduced me to the world of healthcare management and, in essence, opened a door for me through which I walked and never looked back.
As an aside, I am not alone in becoming aware of the profession of healthcare management in a somewhat serendipitous fashion. But as healthcare management becomes increasingly complex, we cannot depend on future healthcare leaders to simply "stumble into" the field. Thus, last year I chaired ACHEs task force that looked for ways ACHE could promote careers in healthcare management to high school students and undergraduate programs. As a result, we developed a Web site (www.healthmanagementcareers.org) promoting me availability of healthcare management careers. After graduate school at Tulane University in New Orleans, I had a wonderfully rich residency at the Ochsner Medical Institutions and was subsequently asked to join the management staff. My goal was to learn as much as I could, contribute to the improvement of die organization, and advance my career, with the overarching goal of managing a university medical center someday. Looking back, I intuitively knew from the outset that it was critical that I develop strong "people skills" and a network of friends and colleagues within and outside of the organization....